HiI am a teacher and teacher trainer and also a great admirer of moodle. I wrote an article for ETP last year which gives an overview of of how you can use moodle for language teaching: the link is on http://jswebdesign.co.uk/pages/moodleJeff

Moodle is a free public domain learning management system. It's software that you put on your server and it allows you to pretty easily, put up courses with teachers and students and learning activities. You don't need to be a progammer to use it. But, if you want it to look slick and be integrated with other parts of your IT infrastructure, you will need a programmer.

I took one course that was delivered in moodle on blog writing (blogwritingcourse.com). My kids built their english writing skills inside another moodle-based course called Time4Writing.com.

I mention these implementations of Moodle since they both have free course demos so you can see what moodle is capable of.

Lots of universities use moodle both for online courses and for online support of traditional courses.

I've been using Moodle for blended courses for more than 5 years now and I must say it works!As open source software, developers are always updating it. For example, some features, such as portfolios, appeared recently.I recommend it; it's user-friendly and intuitive!

As part of your broadband subscription to CLEO [in UK] your school can benefit from its own Learning Platform, at no cost to the school. Over 700 schools across Cumbria and Lancashire are already using Moodle, the open source Learning Platform centrally hosted and maintained for schools by CLEO.

Moodle provides a range of functionality covering content creation and delivery, communication and collaboration and management, including tracking and assessment tools.